Digital literacy vs. Information literacy
In an interesting post on Reading’s Digitally Ready blog, Helen Hathaway notes that ‘digital literacy’ often has a functional skills definition:
Much of the discussion on “digital literacy” seems to look at the plumbing of digital tools rather than the quality of the information flowing through them, or the nuts and bolts of technology rather than what it is supporting – and neglect the notion of literacy. For me being digitally literate means having all the cognitive skills of information literacy PLUS the technical skills to make good use of resources PLUS a dimension of creativity in outputs which are difficult to achieve through the written word and an immediacy and step change in communication whether as a learner, teacher, support staff or creator.
Project as programme?
Chris Follows at the University of the Arts’ DIAL blog reflects on the growth of their JISC-funded Developing Digital Literacies project into a university-wide programme:
The DIAL project was always going to be bigger than a project and by acknowledging this and looking at DIAL as a potential UAL programme we can better build a case for developing a UAL wide digital strategy and sustainability plans to develop and maintain progressive digital practice at UAL. So DIAL will run as a programme and do its best to acknowledge as wide a spectrum of issues as possible although it can not address everything. DIAL will concentrate supporting a small number of DIAL project groups, these focused mostly ‘grassroots’ projects will address issues identified in the DIAL project plan, ‘Open education at UAL’ is one of DIAL’s first pilot groups
University College London presentation
Representatives from the UCL Digital Department project gave a presentation last week on their work thus far. Their slides can be found before:
[slideshare id=12147174&doc=sdapresentation20120320-120325044752-phpapp02]
All of the blogs for those projects involved in the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme can be found here.
Image CC BY dougbelshaw